24.09.2005.

Photography is a complex field, and it can be difficult getting started. There’s a lot of material out there aimed at beginners, but much of it is quite general and doesn’t get into a lot of the specifics of a given camera maker’s product lineup. For example, Photo.net and Photozone.de are two sites with some excellent beginner articles, but these articles are fairly general in scope so as to be useful to as broad a range of users as possible. Many of the books on the market were written during the heyday of amateur SLR photography in the 1970s and early 80s and so don’t even talk about autofocus cameras. There’s more specific material to be had, but a lot of it is quite advanced in nature. For example, Bob Atkins has an excellent Canon FAQ available, but it has little beginner material and has not been recently updated.

So that’s the purpose of this document. It’s information on Canon EOS SLR cameras and related products, aimed at the beginner and packed with a lot of typical questions that beginners actually ask. And though it assumes you’re a Canon user or potential Canon user, much of the information here is still general enough to be of interest to users of other camera systems.

Note that I wrote this document because it’s basically what I wish existed when I was starting out. I’m not affiliated with Canon or any other maker, nor do I endorse their stuff. I happen to use some of their products as they work well for me, but that’s it.